Died in the Wool

CHAPTER VII ACCORDING TO BEN WILSON

Having left instructions with himself to wake at five, Alleyn did so and was aware of distant stirrings in the house. Outside in the dark a cock crew and the clamour of his voice echoed into nothingness. Beneath Alleyn’s window someone walked firmly along the terrace path and round the corner of the house. He carried a tin bucket that clanked with his stride and he whistled shrilly. From over in the direction of the men’s quarters all the Mount Moon sheep-dogs broke into a chorus, their voices sounding hollow and cold in the dawn air. There followed the ring of an axe, an abrupt burst of conversation and, presently, the smell of wood smoke, aromatic and pleasing. Beyond the still nighted windows there was only a faint promise of light, a vague thinning, but, as he watched, there appeared in the darkness a rosy horn, unearthly clear. It was the Cloud Piercer, far beyond the plateau, receiving the dawn.

Alleyn bathed and shaved by candlelight and, when he returned to his room, found visible outside his window the vague shapes of trees, patches of blanket mist above the swamp, and the road, lonely and bleached, reaching out across the plateau. Beneath his window the garden waited, straw-coloured, frosty and rigid. As he dressed, the sky grew clear behind the mountains and though the plateau was still dusky, they became articulate in remote sunlight.

Breakfast began in artificial light, but before it was over the lamp had grown wan and ineffectual. It was now full morning. The character of the house had changed. There was an air of preparation for the working day. Douglas and Fabian wore farm clothes — shapeless flannel trousers, faded sweaters pulled over dark shirts, old tweed jackets and heavy boots. Ursula was briskly smocked. Terence Lynne appeared, composed as ever, in a drill coat, woollen stockings and breeches — an English touch, this, Alleyn felt: alone of the four she seemed to be dressed deliberately for a high-country role. Mrs. Aceworthy, alternately dubious and arch, presided.

Douglas finished before the rest and, with a word to Fabian, went out, passing in front of the dining-room windows. Presently he appeared, far beyond the lawn in the ram paddock, a dog at his heels. Five merino rams at the far end of the paddock jerked up their heads and stared at him. Alleyn watched Douglas walk to a gate, open it, and wait. After a minute or two the rams began to cross the paddock towards him, heavily, not hurrying. He let them through the gate and they disappeared together, a portentous company.

“When you’re ready,” said Fabian, “shall we go over to the wool-shed?”

“If there’s anything you would like—” Mrs. Aceworthy said. “I mean, I’m sure we all want to be helpful — so dreadful — so many inquiries. One might almost feel — but of course this is quite different, I’m sure.” She drifted unhappily away.

“The Ace-pot’s a bit scattered this morning,” Ursula said. “You’ll tell us, won’t you, Mr. Alleyn, if there’s anything we can do?”

Alleyn thanked her and said there was nothing. He and Fabian went out of doors.

The sun had not yet reached Mount Moon. The air was cold and the ground crisp under their feet. From the direction of the yards came the authentic voice of the high-country, a dreamlike and conglomerate drone, the voice of a mob of sheep. Fabian led the way along the left-hand walk between clipped poplar hedges, already flame-coloured. They turned down the lavender path and through a gate, making a long stride over an icy little water race, and then walked uphill in the direction of the wool-shed and cottages.

The sound increased in volume. Individual bleatings, persistent and almost human, separated out from the multiple drone. A long galvanized-iron shed appeared, flanked with drafting yards beyond which lay a paddock so full of sheep that at a distance it looked like a shifting greyish lake. The sheep were driven up to the yards by men and dogs: the men yelled and the dogs barked remorselessly and without rhythm. A continual flood of sheep poured through a series of yards, each smaller than the last, into a narrow runway or race and was forced and harried towards a two-way gate which a short, monkey-faced man shoved now this way, now that, drafting them into separate pens. This progress was assisted by a youth outside the rails who continually ran towards the sheep waving his hat and crying out in a falsetto voice. At each of these sallies the sheep, harried from the rear by dogs, would dart past the youth towards the drafting gate. The acrid smell of greasy wool was strong on the cold air.

“That’s Tommy Johns,” said Fabian, jerking his head at the man at the drafting gate. “The boy’s young Cliff.”

He was rather a nice-looking lad, Alleyn thought. He had a well-shaped head and a thatch of light brown hair that overhung his forehead. His face was thin. There was an agreeable sharpness and delicacy in the bony structures of the eyes and cheek-bones. The mouth was obstinate. He still had a lean, gangling air about him, the last characteristic of adolescence. His hands were broad and nervous. His grey sweater and dirty flannel trousers had a schoolboyish look that contrasted strongly with the clothes of the other men. When he saw Fabian he gave him a sidelong grin and then with a whoop and a flourish ran again at the oncoming sheep. They streamed past him to the drafting gate and huddled together, clambering on each other’s backs.

Now that he had drawn closer Alleyn could resolve the babel into its component parts: the complaint of the sheep, the patter of their feet on frozen earth and their human-like coughing and breathing; the yelp of dogs and men and, within the shed, the burr of an engine and intermittent bumping and thuds.

“There’ll be a smoke-oh in ten minutes,” said Fabian. “Would you like to see inside?”

“Right,” said Alleyn.

Tommy Johns didn’t raise his eyes as they passed him. The gate bumped to and fro against worn posts and the sheep darted through. “He’s counting,” Fabian said.

The wool-shed seemed dark when they first went in and the reek of sheep was almost tangible. The greatest area of light fell where the shearers were at work. It came through a doorless opening from which a sacking curtain had been pulled back and through the open port-holes that were exits for the sheep. From where Alleyn stood the shearers themselves were outlined with light and each sheep’s woolly coat had a bright nimbus. This strangely dramatic illumination focused attention on the shearing board. The rest of the interior seemed at first to be lost in a swimming dusk. But presently a wool sorter’s bench, ranked packs, and pens filled with waiting sheep, took shape in the shadows and Alleyn was able to form a comprehensive picture of the whole scene.

For a time he watched only the shearers. He saw them lug sheep out of the pens by their hind legs and handle them with dexterity so that they became quiescent, voluptuously quiescent almost, lolling back against the shearers’ legs, in a ridiculous sitting posture, or suffering their necks to be held between the shearers’ knees while the mechanically propelled blades, hanging from long arms with flexible joints, rolled away their wool.

“Is this crutching?” he asked.

“That’s it. De-bagging, you might call it.”

Alleyn saw the dirty wool turn back in a wave that was cream inside and watched the quarter-denuded sheep shoved away through the port-holes. He saw the broomies, two silent boys, sweep the dirty crutchings up to the sorter and fling them out on his rack. He saw the wool sorted and tossed into bins and finally he followed it to the press.

The press was in a central position, some distance from the shearing board. It faced the main portion of the shed and actually looked, Alleyn thought, a little like an improvised rostrum. Here Flossie Rubrick was to have stood on the night of her wool-shed party. From here she was to harangue a mob of friends, voters, and fellow high-countrymen, almost as quiescent as the shorn sheep. Alleyn sharpened his memory until it could encompass the figure of the woman with whom he had spoken for a few minutes. A tiny woman with a clear and insistent voice and an ugly face. A woman who wished to acquire him as a guest and from whom he had escaped with difficulty. He remembered her sharp stare and her rather too self-confident manner. These recollections remained unchanged by last night’s spate of conflicting impressions and it was the wraith of the persistent little woman he had met whom he now conjured up in the dark end of the wool-shed. Where had she stood? From what direction had her assailant come?

“She was going to try her voice, you know,” said Fabian at his elbow.

“Yes, but from where? The press? It was full of unpressed wool and open, when the men stopped work the previous night. Did she clamp down the pressing lid or whatever it’s called and climb up?”

“That’s what we’ve always supposed.”

“Is the new press in exactly the same place?”

“Yes. Under that red show ticket nailed up on the post.” Alleyn walked past the shearing board or floor. The wall opposite was a five-foot-high partition separating the indoor pens from the rest of the shed. Farther along, behind the press, this wall was extended up towards the roof. At some time a nail had been driven through it from the other side and the point, now rusty, projected close to the wool-press. He stooped to look at it. The machines still thrummed and the sheep plunged and skidded as they were hauled out of the pens. The work went on but Alleyn thought that the men knew exactly what he was doing. He straightened up. Above the rusty nail there ran a cross-beam in the wall on which anybody, intending to mount the press, might find foothold. Round the nail they had found a thread of Flossie’s dress material. The apex of the tear in her dress had been uppermost, so it had been caused by an upward pull. “As she climbed the press,” thought Alleyn, “not when her assailant disposed of the body. It was too securely bound and the press opens from the front. He would truss the body, then clear the tramped wool out of the pack, leaving only the bottom layer, then open the front of the press and get the body into the bale, then would begin the repacking. But where was she when he struck her? A downward blow from behind near the base of the skull and grazing the back of the neck. Was she bent forward, her hands on the press? Stooping to free her dress? Was she in the act of climbing down from the press to speak to him, her feet already on the floor, her back towards him?” That seemed most likely, he thought.

Near the wool-press, a hurricane lantern hung from a nail in the wall. Farther along, to the left, a rough candlestick hammered out of tin was nailed high up on a joist. It held a guttered stump of candle. A box of matches stood beside it. These appointments had been there at the time of the tragedy. Had Flossie lit the lantern or the candle? Surely. It was dusk outside and the wool-shed must have been in darkness. How strange, he thought, as the image of a tiny indomitable woman, lit fantastically, grew in his imagination. There she must have stood, in semi-darkness, shouting out the phrases of which Terence Lynne and Fabian Losse had grown weary, while her sharp voice echoed in the emptiness. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” How far had she got? What did her assailant hear as he approached? Was he — or she — actually an audience, stationed by Flossie at the far end of the shed, to mark the resonant phrases? Or did he creep in under cover of the darkness and wait until she descended? With the branding iron grasped in his right hand? Behind her and to her right, the inside pens had been crowded with sheep waiting for the next day’s shearing, too closely packed to do more than shift a little and tap with their small hooves on the slatted floor. Did they bleat at all, Alleyn wondered, when Flossie tried her voice? “Ladies and Gentlemen.”

“Ba-a-a.” From where he stood Alleyn could see slantwise, through the five port-holes and the open doorway at the end of the shearing board. The sun was bright on the sheep pens outside. But when Florence Rubrick stood on the wool-press it had been almost dark outside, the port-holes must have been shut and the sacking curtain dropped over the doorway. The main doors of the shed had been shut that night and a heap of folded wool bales that had fallen across the floor, inside the main entrance, had not been disturbed. The murderer, then, had come in by this sacking door. Did Flossie see the sacking drawn aside and a black silhouette against the dusk? Or did he, perhaps, crawl in through one of the portholes, unobserved? “Ladies and Gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure…”

A whistle tooted. Each shearer finished crutching the sheep in hand and loosed it through a port-hole. The engine stopped and the wool-shed was suddenly quiet. The noise from outside became dominant again.

“Smoke-oh,” Fabian explained. “Come and meet Ben Wilson.”

Ben Wilson was the sorter, boss of the shed, an elderly mild man who shook hands solemnly with Alleyn and said nothing. Fabian explained why Alleyn was there and Wilson looked at the floor and still said nothing. “Shall we move away a bit?” Alleyn suggested, and they walked to the double doors at the far end of the shed and stood there, enveloped in sunshine and the silence of Ben Wilson. Alleyn offered his cigarette case. Mr. Wilson said “Ta,” and took one.

“It’s the same old story, Ben,” said Fabian, “but we’re hoping Mr. Alleyn may get a bit further than the other experts. We’re lucky to have him.” Mr. Wilson glanced at Alleyn and then at the floor. He smoked cautiously, sheltering his cigarette with the palm of his hand. He had the air of a man whose life’s object was to avoid making the slightest advance to anybody.

“You were here for the January shearing when Mrs. Rubrick was killed, weren’t you, Mr. Wilson?” asked Alleyn.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Wilson.

“I’m afraid you must be completely fed up with policemen and their questions.”

“That’s right.”

“And I’m afraid mine will be precisely the same set of questions all over again.” Alleyn waited and Mr. Wilson, with an extremely smug expression, compounded, it seemed, of mistrust, complacency and resignation, said: “You’re telling me.”

“All right,” said Alleyn. “Here goes, then. On the night of January 29th, 1942 when Mrs. Rubrick was stunned, suffocated, bound, and packed into a wool bale in the replica of the press over there, you were in charge of the shed as usual, I suppose?”

“I was over at Lakeside,” Mr. Wilson muttered as if the statement were an obscenity.

“At the time she was murdered? Yes, you probably were. At a dance wasn’t it? But (you must forgive me if I’ve got it wrong) the wool-shed is under your management during the shearing, isn’t it?”

“Manner of speaking.”

“Yes. And I suppose you have a look round after knock-off time?”

“Not much to look at.”

“Those trap-doors or port-holes by the shearing board for instance. Were they shut?”

“That’s right.”

“But the traps could be raised from outside?”

“That’s right.”

“And the sacking over the door at the end of the board. Was that dropped?”

“That’s right.”

“Was it fastened in any way?”

“Fastened?”

“Fastened, yes.”

“She’s nailed to a bit of three-be-two and we drop it.”

“I see. And the pile of sacks or empty bales inside these rolling double doors — were they lying in such a way that anybody coming in or going out would disturb them?”

“I’ll say.”

“But in the morning, did they look as if they’d been disturbed?”

Mr. Wilson shook his head very slightly.

“Did you notice them particularly?”

“That’s right.”

“How was that?”

“I’d told the boys to shift them and they never.”

“Could the doors have been rolled open from outside?”

“Not a chance.”

“Were they fastened inside?”

“That’s right.”

“Is it remotely possible that there was somebody hiding in here when you knocked off?”

“Not a chance.”

“Mrs. Rubrick must have come in by the sacking door?”

Mr. Wilson grunted.

“She was very short. She couldn’t reach up to fit the baton on the cross-beam where it now rests. So she probably pushed it in a little way. Is that right, should you say?”

“Might be.”

“And her murderer must have gained entrance by the same means, if we wash out the possibility of shoving up one of the traps and coming in that way?”

“Looks like it.”

“Where was the branding iron left, when you knocked off?”

“Inside the door, on the floor.”

“The sacking door, that is. And the pot of paint was there too, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“Was the iron in its right place the next morning?”

“Young Cliff says it was shifted,” said Mr. Wilson in a sudden burst of loquacity.

“Had he put it away?”

“That’s right. He says it was shifted. It was him first drew attention to the thing. He put the police on to it.”

“Did you notice anything unusual that morning, Mr. Wilson? Anything at all, however trivial?”

Mr. Wilson fixed his pale blue gare upon a cluster of ewes at the far end of the paddock and said: “Look.” Alleyn looked at the ewes. “Listen,” Mr. Wilson continued. “I told Sergeant Clark what I seen when I come in and I told Sub-Inspector Jackson and they both wrote it down. The men told them what they seen and they wrote that down too, although it was the same as what I seen.”

“I know,” said Alleyn, “I know. It seems silly but I would rather like to hear it for myself now I’ve seen the place. You see, there was nothing new or confusing about a wool-shed to Clark and Jackson. They’re New Zealanders, dyed in the wool, and they understand.”

Mr. Wilson laughed surprisingly and with unexampled contempt. “Them?” he said. “They were as much at home in the shed as a couple of ruddy giraffes, those two jokers.”

“In that case,” said Alleyn with a mental apology to his colleagues, “I should certainly prefer to hear the story from you.”

“There isn’t a story,” said Mr. Wilson piteously. “That’s what I keep telling you. There isn’t a ruddy story.”

“Just give Mr. Alleyn an account of the way you opened up the shed and got going, Ben,” said Fabian.

“That’s it,” Alleyn agreed hurriedly. “I only want to know the routine as you went through with it that morning, step by step. So that I can get an idea of how things went. Step by step,” he repeated. “Put yourself in my position, Mr. Wilson. Suppose you had to find out, all of a sudden, exactly what took place at dawn in a — in a pickle factory or a young ladies’ boarding-school, or a maternity hospital. I mean—” Alleyn thrust his cigarettes at Mr. Wilson and clapped him nervously on the shoulder. “Be a good chap, for God’s sake,” he said, “and spit it out.”

“Ta,” said Mr. Wilson, lighting the new cigarette at the butt of the old one. “Oh, well,” he said resignedly, and Alleyn sat down on a wool pack.

Once embarked Mr. Wilson made better showing than might have been hoped for. There was a tendency to skip and become cryptic but Fabian acted as a sort of interpreter and on the whole he did not too badly. A picture of the working day in a wool-shed began to take shape. Everybody had been short-tempered that morning, it seemed. Mr. Wilson himself had a bad attack of some gastric complaint to which he was prone and which had developed during the night on the journey back from the dance. At a quarter to two that morning, when they reached Mount Moon, he was, he said, proper crook, and he had spent the remainder of the night in acute discomfort. No, he said wearily, they’d noticed nothing funny in the wool-shed when they came home. They were not in the mood, Alleyn gathered, to notice anything. The farm lorry had sprung a puncture down by the front gate, and they decided to leave it there until morning. They walked the half mile up to the homestead, with the liquor dying out in them as they did so. They hadn’t talked much until they got level with the yards, and there a violent political argument had suddenly developed between two of the shearers. “I told them to pass it up,” said Mr. Wilson, “and we all turned in.”

They were up again at dawn. The sky was overcast and when Albie Black went down to open up the shed a very light drizzle had set in. If this continued, it meant that when the sheep under cover were shorn, the men would have to knock off until the next batch had dried. This was the last day’s shearing and the lorry was to call in the afternoon for the clip which should have been ready before noon. Albie Black went to light the hurricane lantern and found that the boys hadn’t filled it with kerosene as he had instructed. He cursed and turned to the candle, only to find it had burnt down to a stump and been squashed out so firmly that the wick had sunk into the wax. He got a fresh piece of candle from another part of the shed, gouged the old stump out and tossed it into the pens. By this time it was light enough to do without it. When Mr. Wilson arrived, Albie poured out his complaints and Mr. Wilson, himself enraged by gastric disorder, gave the boys the sharp edge of his tongue. He was further incensed by finding, as he put it, “a dump of wool in my number two bin that hadn’t been there when we knocked off the night before. All mucked up, it was, as if someone had been messing it about and then tried to roll it up proper.”

“The wool is put into bins according to its grade?” Alleyn asked.

“That’s right. This was number two stuff, all right. I reckoned the broomies had got into the shed when we was over at the dance and started mucking round with the stuff in the press.”

The boys, however, had vigourously denied these accusations. They swore that they had filled the lamp and had not meddled with the candle which had been fully five inches long. Tommy Johns arrived and pulled on his overalls which hung on a nail near the shearing board. His foot caught in an open seam in the trousers and tore it wider. He instantly accused Albie Black of having used the overalls, which were new. Albie hotly denied this. Mr. Johns pointed out several dark stains on the front of the overalls and muttered incredulously.

The men started shearing. Damp sheep were crammed under cover to dry off as the already dry sheep thinned out. Fabian and Douglas arrived, anxious about the weather. By this time almost everybody on the place was in an evil temper. One of the shearers, in running across the belly of a sheep, cut it badly and Douglas, who happened to be standing by, trod in a pool of blood. “And did he go crook!” Mr. Wilson ruminated appreciatively.

Arthur Rubrick arrived at this juncture, walking slowly and very short of breath. “And,” said Mr. Wilson, “the boss picked things was not too pleasant and asked Tommy Johns what was wrong. Tommy started moaning about nobody being any good on the place. They were standing near the sorting table and I heard what was said.”

“Can you remember it?” Alleyn asked.

“I can remember all right, but there was nothing in it.”

“May I hear about it? I’m enormously grateful for all this, Mr. Wilson.”

“It didn’t amount to anything. Tommy’s a funny joker. He goes crook sometimes. He said the men were a lot of lazy bastards.”

“Anything else?”

“Young Cliff was in trouble about a bottle of booze. Mrs. Rubrick had told him off a couple of nights before. Tommy didn’t like it. He was complaining about it.”

“What did Mr. Rubrick say?”

“He wasn’t too good that morning. He was bad, you could see that. His face was a terrible colour. He was very quiet, and kept saying it was unfortunate. He seemed to think it was very very hot in the shed, and kept moving as if he’d like to clear out. His hands were shaky, too. He was bad, all right.”

“How did it end?”

“Young Doug came up — the Captain,” Mr. Wilson explained with a hint of irony. “He was in a bit of a mess. Bloody. It seemed to upset the boss and he said quite violent: ‘What the devil have you been doing?’ and Doug didn’t like it and turned his back on him and walked out.”

“Now, that’s an incident that we haven’t got in the files,” Alleyn said.

“I never mentioned it. This Sub-Inspector Jackson comes into my shed and throws his weight about, treating us from the word go as if we’re holding back on him. Very inconsiderate, he was. ‘I don’t want to know what you think. I want you to answer my questions.’ All right. We answered his questions.”

“Oh, well,” said Alleyn pacifically.

“We don’t want to hold back on it,” Mr. Wilson continued with warmth. “We were as much put out as anyone else when we heard. It’s not very nice to think about. When they told Jack Merrywether — he’s the presser — what he must of done that morning, he vomited. All over my shearing board before anyone could take any steps about it. It was nearly a month afterwards but that made no difference to Jack.”

“Quite,” said Alleyn. “How did this visit of Mr. Rubrick’s end?”

“It finished up by the boss taking a bad turn. We helped him out into the open. You wasn’t about just then, Mr. Losse, and he asked us not to say anything. He carried some kind of medicine on him that he sniffed up and it seemed to fix him. Tommy sent young Cliff for the station car and he drove the boss back to the house. He was very particular we shouldn’t mention it. Anxious to avoid trouble. He was a gentleman, was Mr. Rubrick.”

“Yes. Now then, Mr. Wilson, about the press. When you knocked off on the previous night it was full of wool, wasn’t it? The top half was on the bottom half and the wool had been tramped down but not pressed. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“And that, to all intents and purposes, was what it looked like in the morning?”

“So far as I noticed but I did no more than glance at it, if that. Jack Merrywether never noticed anything.”

“When did you finish shearing?”

“Not till six that evening. We cleaned up the sheep that’d been brought in overnight and then there was a hold-up. That was at eleven. The fresh ones we’d brought in hadn’t dried off. Then it come up sunny and we turned them out again. Everyone was snaky. Young Doug says the sheep are dry and I say they’re not and Tommy Johns says they’re not. The lorry turns up and Syd Barnes, he’s the driver, he has to shove in his oar and reckon they’re dry because he wants to get on with it and make the pub at the Pass before dark. Sol tell the whole gang where they get off and by that time the sheep have dried and we start up again. Young Cliff was hanging around the shed doing nothing, and then he slopes off, and his father goes crook when he can’t find him. It was lovely.”

The whistle tooted and the shed was at once active. Five plunging sheep were dragged in by their hind legs from the pens, machinery whirred, a raw-boned man moved over to the press, spat on his hands, and bore down on the ratchet lever. Mr. Wilson pinched out his cigarette, nodded and walked back to the sorter’s table.

Alleyn watched the presser complete his work. The bale was sewn up, removed, and shoved along the floor towards the double doors where he and Fabian still waited. This process was assisted by the use of a short hook which was caught into the corners of the bale. “The lorry backs in here,” Fabian said, “and the packs are dumped on board. The floor’s the same height as the lorry, or a little higher. There’s no lifting. It’s the same sort of business in the wool store at the other end.”

“Is that the same presser? Jack Merrywether?”

“Yes,” said Fabian, “that’s Jack. He who was so acutely inconvenienced by the absence of a vomitorium in the wool-shed.”

“Is he apt to be sick again, do you imagine, if I put a few simple questions to him?”

“Who can tell? What do you want to ask him?”

“Whether he used one of those hooks when he shifted the crucial bale.”

“Ticklish!” Fabian said. “It makes even me a little queasy to think of it. Hi, Jack!”

Merrywether’s reaction to his summons was disquieting. No sooner had Fabian spoken his introductory phrases than the presser turned pale and stared at Alleyn with an expression of panic.

“Look,” he said. “I wouldn’t of come back on this job if it hadn’t of been for the war. That’s how it affected me. I’d have turned it up only for the war and there being a shortage. ‘Look,’ I said to Mr. Johns and Ben Wilson, I said, ‘not if it’s the same outfit,’ I said. ‘You don’t get me coming at the Mount Moon job if it’s the same press again,’ I said. Then they told me it was a new press and I give in. I come to oblige. Not willing, though. I didn’t fancy it and I don’t yet. Call me soft if you like but that’s how I am. If anybody starts asking me about you-know-what, it catches me smack in the belly. I feel shocking. I don’t reckon I’ll ever shake it off. Now!”

Alleyn murmured sympathetically.

“Look at it whatever way you like,” Merrywether continued argumentatively, “and it’s still a fair cow. You think you’re mastering the sensation and then somebody comes along and starts asking you a lot of silly questions and you feel terrible again.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Alleyn said hurriedly, “there’s only one detail I’d like to check.” He glanced at the bale hook which Merrywether still grasped in his pink freckled hand. Merrywether followed his glance. His fingers opened and the hook crashed on the floor. With clairvoyant accuracy he roared out: “I know what you mean and I never! It wasn’t there. I never touched it with the hook. Now!” And before Alleyn could reply he added: “You ask me why. All right. They’d dumped the hook on me. There you are! Deliberate, I reckon.”

“Dumped it on you? The hook? Hid it?”

“That’s right. Deliberate. Stuck it up on a beam over there.” He gestured excitedly at the far wall of the shed. “There’s two of those hooks and that’s what they done with them. In that dark corner and high up where I couldn’t see them. So what do I do? Go crook at the broomies. Naturally. I get the idea they done it to swing one across me. They’re boys and they act like boys. Cheeky. I’d told them off the day before and I reckoned they’d come back at me with this one. ‘You come to light with them two hooks,’ I said, ‘or I’ll knock your blocks off you.’ Well, of course they says they don’t know anything about it and I don’t believe them and away we go. And by this time the bins are full and me and my mate are behind on our job.”

Alleyn walked over to the wall and reached up. He could just get his hand on the beam.

“So you moved the bales without using hooks?”

“That’s right. Now don’t ask me if we noticed anything. If we’d noticed anything we’d have said something, wouldn’t we? All right.”

“When did you find the hooks?”

“That night when we was clearing up, Albie Black starts in again on the boys, saying they never done their job, not filling up the kerosene lamp and fooling round with the candle. So we all look over where the lantern and the candle are on the wall and my mate says they’ve been swarming up the wall like a couple of blasted monkeys. ‘What’s that up there?’ he howls. He’s a tall joker and he walks across and yanks down the bale hooks off of the top beam. The boys reckon they don’t know how the hooks got up there and we argue round the point till Tommy Johns has to bring up the matter of who the hell put his foot through his overall pants. Oh, it was a lovely day.”

“When the bales were finally loaded on the lorry—” Alleyn began, but at once Merrywether took fright. “Now, don’t you start in on me about that,” he scolded. “I never noticed nothing. How would I? I never handled it.”

“All right, my dear man,” said Alleyn pacifically, “you didn’t. That disposes of that. Don’t be so damned touchy; I never knew such a chap.”

“I got to consider my stomach,” said Merrywether darkly.

“Your stomach’ll have to lump it, I’m afraid. Who stencilled the Mount Moon mark on the bales?”

“Young Cliff.”

“And who sewed up the bales?”

“I did. Now!”

“All right. Now the bale with which I’m concerned was the first one you handled that morning. When you started work it was full of wool that apparently had been trampled down but not pressed. You pressed it. You told the police you noticed no change whatever, nothing remarkable or unusual in the condition of the bale. It was exactly as you’d left it the night before.”

“So it was the same. Wouldn’t I of noticed if it hadn’t been?”

“I should have thought so, certainly. The floor, for instance, round the press.”

“What about it?” Merrywether began on a high note. Alleyn saw his hands contract. He blinked, his sandy lashes moving like shutters over his light eyes. “What about the floor?” he said less truculently.

“I notice how smooth the surface is. Would that be the natural grease in the fleeces? It’s particularly noticeable on the shearing board and round the press where the bales may act as polishing agents when they are shoved across the floor.” He glanced at Merrywether’s feet. “You wear ordinary boots. The soles must get quite glassy in here, I should have thought.”

“Not to notice,” he said uncomfortably.

“The floor was in its normal condition that morning, was it? No odd pieces of wool lying about?”

“I told you—” Merrywether began, but Alleyn interrupted him. “And as smooth as ever?” he said. Merrywether was silent. “Come now,” said Alleyn, “haven’t you remembered something that escaped your memory before, when Sub-Inspector Jackson talked to you?”

“I couldn’t be expected — I was crook. The way he kept asking me how could I of shifted a pack with you-know-what inside it. It turned my stomach on me.”

“I know. But the floor. Thinking back, now. Was there anything about the floor, round the press, when you arrived here that morning? Was it swept and polished as usual?”

“It was swept.”

“And polished?”

“All right, all right, it wasn’t. How was I to remember, three weeks later? The way I’d got churned up over what, in all innocence, I done? It never crossed me mind till just now when you brought it up. I noticed it and yet I never noticed it if you can understand.”

“I know,” said Alleyn.

“But in pity’s name, Jack,” cried Fabian, who had been silent throughout the entire interview, “what did you notice?”

“The floor was kind of smudged,” said Merrywether.

In the men’s midday dinner hour, Fabian brought Cliff Johns to the study. Alleyn felt curious about this boy who had so unexpectedly refused the patronage of Florence Rubrick. He had asked Fabian to leave them alone together and now, as he watched the unco-ordinated movements of the youth’s hands, he wondered if Cliff knew that in defiance of his alibi he was Sub-Inspector Jackson’s pet among the suspects.

He got the boy to sit down and asked him if he understood the reason for the interview. Cliff nodded and clenched and unclenched his wide mobile hands. Behind him, beyond open windows, glared a noonday garden, the plateau, blank with sunshine, and the mountains etherealized now by an intensity of light. Shadows on those ranges appeared translucent as though the sky beyond shone through. Their snows dazzled the eyes and seemed to be composed of light without substance. A nimbus of light rimmed Cliff’s hair. Alleyn thought that his wife would have liked to paint the boy, and would have found pleasure in reflected colour that swam in the hollow of his temples and beneath the sharp arches of his brows. He said: “Are you interested in painting as well as music?”

Cliff blinked at him and shuffled his feet. “Yes,” he said. “A friend of mine is keen. Anything that — I mean — there aren’t so many people — I mean—”

“I only asked you,” Alleyn said, “because I wondered if it would be as difficult to express this extraordinary landscape in terms of music as it would be to do so in terms of paint.” Cliff looked sharply at him. “I don’t understand music, you see,” Alleyn went on. “But paint does say something to me. When I heard that music was your particular thing I felt rather lost. The technique of approach through channels of interest wouldn’t work. So I thought I’d try a switch-over. Any good or rotten?”

“I’d rather do without a channel of approach, I think,” Cliff said. “I’d rather get it over, if you don’t mind.” But instead of allowing Alleyn to follow his suggestion, he added, half-shamefaced: “That’s what I wanted to do. With music, I mean. Say something about this.” He jerked his head at the vastness beyond the window and added with an air of defiance: “And I don’t mean the introduction of native bird song and Maori hakas into an ersatz symphony.” Alleyn heard an echo of Fabian Losse in this speech.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that the forcible injection of local colour is the catch in any aesthetic treatment of this country. There is no forcing the growth of an art, is there, and, happily, no denying it when the moment is ripe. Is your music good?”

Cliff sank his head between his shoulders and with the profundity of the very young said: “It might have been. I’ve chucked it.”

“Why?”

Cliff muttered undistinguishably, caught Alleyn’s eye and blurted out: “The kind of things that have happened to me.”

“I see. You mean, of course, the difference of opinion with Mrs. Rubrick, and her murder. Do you really believe that you’ll be worse off for these horrors? I’ve always had a notion that, if his craft has a sound core, an artist should ripen with experience, however beastly the experience may be at the time. But perhaps that’s a layman’s idea. Perhaps you had two remedies: your music and—” he looked out of the windows—“all this. You chose the landscape. Is that it?”

“They wouldn’t have me for the army.”

“You aren’t yet eighteen are you?”

“They wouldn’t have me. Eyes and feet,” said Cliff as if the naming of these members were an offence against decency. “I can see as well as anybody and I can muster the high-country for three days without noticing my feet. That’s the army for you.”

“So you mean to carry on mustering the high-country and seeing as far through a brick wall as the next fellow?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you ever lend a hand at wool sorting, or try to learn about it?”

“I keep outside the shed. Always have.”

“It’s a profitable job, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather go up the hill on a muster.”

“And — no music?”

Cliff shuffled his feet.

“Why?” Alleyn persisted. Cliff rubbed his hands across his face and shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I told you I can’t.”

“Not since the evening in the annex? When you played for an hour or more on a very disreputable old instrument. That was the night following the incident over the bottle of whisky, wasn’t it?”

More than at anything else, Alleyn thought, more than at the reminder of Florence Rubrick’s death, even, Cliff sickened at the memory of this incident. It had been a seriocomic episode. Markins indignant at the window, the crash of a bursting bottle and the reek of spirits. Alleyn remembered that the tragedies of adolescence were felt more often in the self-esteem, and he said: “I want you to explain this whisky story but, before you do, you might just remind yourself that there isn’t a creature living who doesn’t carry within him the memory of some particular shabbiness of which he’s much more ashamed than he would be of a major crime. Also that there’s probably not a boy in the world who hasn’t at some time or other committed petty larceny. I may add that I personally don’t give a damn whether you were silly enough to pinch Mr. Rubrick’s whisky or not. But I am concerned to find out whether you told the truth when you said you didn’t pinch it and why, if this is so, you wouldn’t explain what you were up to in the cellarage.”

“I wasn’t taking it,” Cliff muttered. “I hadn’t taken it.”

“Bible oath before a beak?”

“Yes. Before anybody.” Cliff looked quickly at him. “1 don’t know how to make it sound true. I don’t expect you to believe me.”

“I’m doing my best, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if you’d tell me what in the world you were up to.” ”

Cliff was silent.

“Not anything in the heroic line?” Alleyn asked mildly.

Cliff opened his mouth and shut it again.

“Because,” Alleyn went on, “there are moments when the heroic line is no more than a spanner in the works of justice. I mean, if you didn’t kill Mrs. Rubrick you’re deliberately, for some fetish of your own, muddling the trail. The whisky may be completely irrelevant but we can’t tell. It’s a question of tidying up. Of course if you did kill her you may be wise to hold your tongue. I don’t know.”

“But you know I didn’t,” Cliff said and his voice faded on a note of bewilderment. “I’ve got an alibi. I played.”

“What was it you played?”

“Bach’s ‘Art of Fugue.’ ”

“Difficult?” Alleyn asked and had to wait a long time for his answer. Cliff made two false starts, checking his voice before it was articulate. “I’d worked at it,” he said at last. “Now why,” Alleyn wondered, “does he jib at telling me it was difficult?”

“It must be disheartening work, slogging away at a bad instrument,” he said. “It is bad, isn’t it?”

Again Cliff was unaccountably reluctant. “Not as bad as all that,” he muttered and, with a sudden spurt: “A friend of mine in a music shop in town came out for a couple of days and tuned it for me. It wasn’t so bad.”

“But nothing like the Bechstein in the drawing-room for instance?”

“It wasn’t so bad,” he persisted. “It’s a good make. It used to be in the house here before — before she got the Bechstein.”

“You must have missed playing the Bechstein.”

“You can’t have everything,” Cliff said.

“Honour,” Alleyn suggested lightly, “or concert grands? Is that it?”

Cliff grinned unexpectedly. “Something of the sort,” he said.

“See here,” said Alleyn. “Will you, without further ado and without me plodding round the by-ways of indirect attack — will you tell me the whole story of your falling-out with Mrs. Rubrick? You needn’t, of course. You can refuse to speak, as you did with my colleagues, and force me to behave as they did: listen to other people’s versions of the quarrel. Do you know that the police files devote two foolscap pages to hearsay accounts of the relationship between you and Mrs. Rubrick?”

“I can imagine it,” said Cliff savagely. “Gestapo methods.”

“Do you really think so?” Alleyn said with such gravity that Cliff looked fixedly at him and turned red. “If you can spare the time,” Alleyn went on, “I’d like to lend you a manual of police law. It would give you an immense feeling of security. You would learn from it that I am forbidden to quote in a court of law anything that you tell me about your relationship with Mrs. Rubrick unless it is to read aloud a statement that you’ve signed before witnesses. And I’m not asking you to do that. I’m asking you to give me the facts of the case so that I can make up my mind whether they have any bearing on her death.”

“They haven’t.”

“Very good. What are they?”

Cliff bent forward, driving his fingers through his hair. Alleyn felt suddenly impatient. “But it is the impatience,” he thought, “of a middle-aged man,” and he reminded himself of the enclosed tragedies of youth. “Like green figs,” he said to himself, “closed in upon themselves. He is not yet eighteen,” he thought, growing more tolerant, “and I bring a code to bear upon him.” Then, as was habitual with him, he disciplined his thoughts and prepared himself for another assault upon Cliff’s over-tragic silence. Before he could speak Cliff raised his head and spoke with simplicity. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “In a way it’ll be a relief. But I’m afraid it’s a long story. You see it all hangs on her. The kind of woman she was.”